Photos

Thursday, 29 January 2015

Gorgeous Göreme

From the glorious first view of Uçhisar,
we drove a short distance until the sign P. Canyon, a viewpoint on the
right hand side.It was our first glorious
view of Göreme and
Rose Valley.Göreme, pronounced gur reh meh,
is derived from Ancient Greek Κόραμα (Kòrama).You can see the resemblance of the current pronunciation
with the Greek name.Göreme is very small (population 2500)
and you can walk to the restaurants and nearby sights.

But some of the more interesting sights and hiking
trails need transportation: either bike, dolmuş, or car.It is now the 20th
day of our 30-day 3700 km road trip.Please see the Central Turkey
Itinerary page for an interactive map of our trip from
Antalya via Goreme and Safranbolu to Istanbul.

Vineyard Cave
Hotel

Vineyard Courtyard

﻿Finally, we arrived at the Vineyard Cave Hotelon a quiet side street in Göreme (on
Ayaz Efendi Sokak 12 just a block north of Karşı Bucak Caddesi). To keep
the cost down, we had booked the standard room, a simple barrel vault, which
is some kind of concrete arch used to create the ceiling.Cave rooms always cost a lot more.

Hassan the owner

As
described in our Turkey
Trip Planningpage, we prefer to stay in the smaller family-run
hotels.The
down side of booking over the Internet is that you cannot bargain.Normally in off-season we would
recommend shopping around in person, especially if you are not on a tight
schedule.As we were on a work vacation,
we researched all our destinations and booked our hotels in advance.However, what we did is select a low cost
room.This turned out well because the
hotel offered an upgrade to a better room almost every time.

Cave Room 4

In
this case, Hassan (the owner) offered us the honeymoon
suite (jacuzzi included) for the same price, which was nice since this was a four night stay.The cave room was very large and beautifully
decorated with antiques, crafts and carpets. Hassan runs a carpet business as well.

Shower with Ottoman Scene

The
bathroom – as large as some pensions in Italy – was like a hamam with an
excellent shower and painted tiles.

Hittite-inspired crafts

Cave
just means that the room was carved out of bed rock.You can see the scrape lines in the solid
rock wall.So, the cave man and woman
lived in cave 4.The only other cavemen here are from South Korea.Later in the week there were a few more
travellers: some embassy staff from Ankara.

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Breakfast is served

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There was a very diverse, self-serve breakfast on the
top floor and you can also get eggs to order.We ate
simit for breakfast since it is more aromatic than white bread.The coffee was delicious.

Breakfast Crafts

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You can eat indoors in the breakfast room,
which has are some very beautiful crafts.

Uchisar

Alternatively,
you can eat outside on the terrace with a great view of the early morning
balloons and Uçhisar.No, the volcanic
plug is not that close. The photo was taken with a 300mm lens.

We spent a lot of mornings talking with
Hassan.He said that only the ground
floor of this building existed before it was converted into a hotel.

Sunset Point View

At the end of our first day, we drove to Sunset
View. You can easily walk there. This is the (free) viewpoint on a ridge on the south side of Göreme town. It is not the (not free) Sunset Point located outside of town. Everybody comes to Sunset Pointfor the dusk-tinted views of the town and Rose Valley but it is worth it for the
soft lighting and unimpeded views.

Rose Valley

There is limited car parking but few tourists drive.You can walk uphill
to the east above Sunset Cave Hotel to get to a wide
open and undeveloped plateau.

It is
fortunate that the town is not allowing any tall buildings or desecration of
the hoodoo areas.There are lots of
stalls near tourist areas but no touts or high pressure people. However, more and more old buildings in the
towns are being converted to hotels. On the other hand, there are no large hotels and little traffic. All in all, Göreme is an awesome, must-see place. Next Post: Cappadocia Fairy ChimneysLast Post: Göreme Top 9 Sights

Kizkalesi to Göreme

﻿After taking a photo of the soft sand beach in Kizkalesi, we set sail for Göreme.At first it was flat and boring, until we
turned north on the expressway to Ankara.The scenery changed from palm trees to sparse shrubs.

Towering Taurus Mountains

﻿﻿Then we climbed over the pass to 1365 m above
sea level.Suddenly there were snow-clad
mountains framed by a hazy blue sky.

The
ancient Mesopotamians (present day Iraq & Syria) believed the storm-gods caused torrential thunderstorms
in these mountains that created the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which were
essential to their civilization.The
bull was commonly used as the symbol of the storm gods and so even today this
range is called the Taurus Mountains.

Nevşehir

Once
we descended onto a high plateau (Cappadocia), it was again flat and
treeless.The expressway went almost all
the way to Nevşehir, where we saw the first cliff side huts.Nevşehir is very modern, large city compared
to Göreme.

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Uchisar Volcanic Plug

Then
we headed east to Uchisar and suddenly we were hit with hoodoo formations and a
castle on the slopes of a very high volcanic plug.There were stalls, a camel and lots of
tourists.

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About Us

The purpose of this blog is to ignite your
sense of wonder and help you appreciate travelling and learning about the world. It covers art, architecture, culture and traditions that are
relevant to travel. Interesting stories highlight how one culture has impacted another culture.

We have lived and travelled around the world, particularly in Europe (7 years), North and Central America. We have led courses and seminars on travel and culture appreciation at the University of Alberta, Grant MacEwan Univ. and the Edmonton Convention Centre. We plan all of our trip itineraries by computer.